


Forward Blessing

by Yuu_chi



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-04 13:39:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5336102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan Lavellan sees more than just the present, knows that the future is a powerful, twisting thing. </p><p>And he might be the only one able to change it, save it or watch it fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Ronan wakes the week before the Temple of Sacred Ashes with an ache that pounds low and hard in his forehead and a tremble chasing itself up and down his hands. There’s a pulling in his gut that’s impossible to resist and Ronan stumbles up and off his bed, out of the tent and into the cool air.

He finds their Keeper out back of her own Aravel organizing some crates with methodical care, but when she sees Ronan she stops and straightens, wrinkled hands setting on his shoulders.

“What is it?” She asks, voice soft but urgent as she runs a palm over Ronan’s sweaty forehead. “Ronan, da’len, what did you see?”

Ronan shivers at the warmth of her skin on his. “Nothing, I didn’t see anything – but…”

Keeper Deshanna frowns. “What did you feel then?”

Ronan’s stomach lurches the same time as his head and he knows with a sense of intrinsic _rightness_ what he should say, but instead he says, “It’s me.”

“You _what_ , da’len?”

“It’s me that needs to go to the Temple,” he says and his voice is raspy from sleep. His stomach flares angrily and Ronan ignores it just as angrily.

The Keeper frowns. “Ananara has been promised the trip. Surely, you’d have known before this?”

Ronan shakes his head, hair sticking to his skin. He’s nearly trembling now and he can’t look her in the eye, stares at the mole on her forehead instead. “I don’t know why, I never know why. All I know is this.”

Somewhere off there’s the shallow bleating of the halla rising, the smoky smell of campfires turning to morning cooking. Clan sounds that have settled into Ronan’s very bones.

(Ronan tries not to think about how the cooking smoke smells suddenly like dead things even though it has never before, because he’s shaking enough as it is; can feel his willpower flaking about the edges even as his stubbornness demands he see this through.)

The Keeper studies him for a moment with careful eyes, smoothing her big, glove like hands through his hair like Ronan’s mother had done when he was young and she alive. “Aright,” she says. “Yes, if it’s to be then it is to be. You know best.”

Ronan’s head trembles and something sighs like a whisper; and then the pain goes. For a moment it leaves something cold and _wrong_ behind, but Ronan ignores it.

The next day Ronan goes, too, knives strapped to his back and his Clan heirloom warm on his throat. Even as he leaves the camp something inside of him sways and yearns, and Ronan has rarely suffered homesickeness before, but now he can feel it right down into his bones.

And he cannot tell if the way he feels like he shall never see home again is just lonely desperation or prophesy.

.

When Ronan had been just tall enough to reach Keeper’s knees the clan realized there was something wrong with him.

Well, perhaps not wrong. Strange, maybe. Unusual.

He was quiet, not shy but reserved and independent. He played fine with the other children, but left on his own he rarely fussed. This itself was not unusual – the Dalish raise children both restless and cautious, youth in their age and age in their youth – but there was something to Ronan that set them on edge.

When there was trouble, Ronan was the center of it. He flung himself into oncoming danger like it was his due; took falls and scrapes for the other children, volunteered always for the tasks that inevitably wound up going terribly awry.

For a while they thought it bad luck. Strange, but explainable.

It was when Ronan saved the camp from Bandits by insisting that the Hunters go _this_ way – _this way, please, you have to come, you have to –_ that they began to suspect something more.

At first they thought magic, but when the Keeper took Ronan aside it was quickly confirmed that he had all the mystical energy of your average riverstone. He understood the theory of it just fine, but whatever gift he bore it was not this one.

It took longer than you might think for somebody to suggest they perhaps _ask_ Ronan.

And Ronan had looked at them with eyes that were big and gold and said, “ _I dream it. See it, sometimes, when awake. And sometimes I just feel it._ ” He’d shrugged, unbothered by the weight of the words that were surely much too heavy for a child so young. “ _It’s just the way it’s always been. Shouldn’t it be?_ ”

The others of the clan had looked at each other then, confused and desperate and just that little bit awed, and Ronan, still so, so young, realized that perhaps no, that was not the way it’d always been.

There were many names Ronan was called after that. Things that made him shivery and shaky, unused to the eyes that followed him around the camp and the whispers that threaded themselves up to his ears. All of a sudden Ronan went from being just another child of the clan to something bigger than he’d ever thought he’d be.

It was… difficult.

For Ronan, he couldn’t ever hope to explain; not as a child and not even as the years mounted and the things that went on inside his body grew and grew and grew.

He went from dreaming of bursts of colour and sound and warnings to things that stretched and stretched. There was never any rhythm or rhyme; he could dream of one of their children losing a foot to an ill placed bear trap one night and the next get nothing but a shaky image of himself running his fingers through a halla’s coat. They were not cautions so much as badly caught glimpses that Ronan doubted he was even meant to catch at all.

The older he becomes the more he sees – and the less he can understand.

He starts to see things that don’t come to be for years; dreams one night at thirteen of a fire flaring that does not happen until he’s fifteen, can only recognize it by the déjà vu that spins his head and the shudder in his gut like something has been finished.

Ronan’s opinions become law in the camp and he _hates_ it.

The others ask him about everything; how he feels about a bonding or a coming birth, what does he think the weather might be like tomorrow – and things like that are benign. He has answers, sometimes, too, even if he doesn’t always give them because the future is not always something that should be announced as it enters.

But there is also – _should we trade with the Shems crossing by the river? Should I name my eldest or my youngest heir to the family trade? Who should be chosen as First, Keeper-next, as father to my children_?

Even Keeper defers to him and Ronan who is only a child by all accounts feels the pressure settle over him like a coat made of the most smothering of leather. He can barely breathe through the expectation that shrouds him.

So when he wakes that morning sick to his stomach and his head pounding he knows that his gift has caught onto what he plans – that his body is fighting against the choice he has made for all that it is worth.

The future is not made of stone but nor is it made of silk; if anything, it's spiderweb. So many threads spread together into something powerful and infinite, and occasionally a thread tugs or comes loose and the web twists or turns but it always, _always_ springs back into place. It’s as strong as it appears fragile, fraught with dark guardians that walk along the edges – and Ronan has always been terrified of spiders.

His very being quakes and his lies taste bitter on his tongue, and he tells the Keeper it is to be him, that he is to go, and the Keeper believes him as everybody always does. When she permits him to leave, he feels a shudder in his spine and the pain disappears with a feeling like wind to his chilly skin.

And Ronan feels a new future settle in to take over the one he has torn to shreds.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was originally my nanowrimo project - but that didn't entirely work out - but all the same I got some of it done and I'm super psyched for this. my tumblr is glenflower if you ever want to ask or discuss anything.


	2. Chapter one

Ronan awakens in chains, head pounding, eyes watering and ash tacky in the dips between his fingers.

 _Of course_ , he thinks through the cotton fluff that is crowding his head, and he feels terribly close to laughing out loud. _Of course I trade the chains of responsibility for the chains of a prisoner_.

There’s a panic there but it’s weighed down by tiredness and resignation. It is not the first time Ronan has blacked out and come to captured and helpless, and although it is not an experience that becomes any easier with repetition he’s too groggy to be truly shaken.

Besides, Ronan is terrifyingly familiar with Tevene décor and this room is completely void of it. Wherever he is now it is not a place he has been before, and that is more comforting than one might imagine.

He should have seen it coming, really, in all senses of the phrase. Ronan’s world tended to be as darkly predictable as it was destined.

(there’s a very real possibility that by deciding to go the Temple when he was never meant to that Ronan has fucked up his whole future; visions he’s been waiting on for years now might be void and he’d known, of course, that that was a risk, but it still leadens his stomach something fierce – for all the troubles it has caused him Ronan has never wished his gift away; he’d just wished himself free _with_ it.)

There’s the sound of a door slamming and Ronan jerks aware even as his head swims. He does not recognize the woman striding towards him with burning eyes and a hand to the sword at her hip, but she very clearly recognizes him.

“Prisoner,” she hisses and Ronan flinches a little. “Are you happy? Is this what you wanted?”

Ronan blinks at her. “To be chained to your floor?”

There’s a twitch at her jaw. “To have the deaths of hundreds of innocents on your hands; to have _that thing_ on your hands.” As she speaks she leans down and yanks Ronan’s wrist hard enough that he’s nearly jerked to his feet, but it’s not the pain in his wrist he feels.

Instead, instantly, he becomes aware of something that feels like fire in the palm of his hand and it takes everything he has in him not to scream as the flames lick down past his skin to burrow into his blood.

“What – _is that_?” Ronan gasps and as he does he realizes he can see something bright and green furling about like candelight in the exact place the pain is coming from.

“You tell me,” the woman says, and doesn’t so much drop him as throw his arm back at him.

“Cassandra,” warns somebody from the shadows and Cassandra’s shoulders draw tight beneath her ears.

Ronan cradles his hand and stares at the green fire on his palm, the cracks that run like rivers through the bronze of his skin. There’s pain there, but it’s blunt, like the after effects of a nasty burn, and Ronan can feel the sweat on his forehead for it all. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know what – what _this_ is.”

Cassandra frowns at him. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not!” Ronan snaps loudly, surprising the both of them with the sudden fever pitch in his voice. Now that his head is clearing he finds his blood boiling like overcooked soup and it takes Ronan a second to recognize that the feeling inside of him is panic. His whole life has come with whispered warnings inside his head and he’s unprepared for the suddenness of this, for the horror he can feel growing around him. He takes a breath, and says, “I’m not. I don’t know what this is, I don’t know who _you_ are – I don’t even know where I _am_.”

Outside there is an explosion and Ronan jerks, trying to peer past Cassandra and out the door even as two guards block his view.

Cassandra studies him carefully, walking around him in a slow circle. “Leliana,” she says, and it confuses Ronan for a moment before he realizes she’s talking to the person standing just out of his sight in the shadows. “What do you make of this?”

Leliana steps forward. Another human. Ronan feels dizzy. Not prophesy dizzy, but overwhelmed dizzy.

“He’s telling the truth,” Leliana declares. “That, or he is a very, very good actor.”

“Please,” Ronan says. “What’s happening – I was… at the Temple?” He thinks on that and he can drudge up a fuzzy memory of tall walls and many, many humans around him. “Yes, the Temple.”

“Everybody who was in that Temple is dead,” Cassandra says coolly. “Everybody except you.”

Ronan stares at her. “No. That can’t be right. I was just there.”

“Hours ago,” Leliana says, and her voice is gentler than Cassandra’s but somehow all the more frightening for it. “Something happened there, we don’t know what, and you walked out of the Fade in a place where everybody else had died, alive and with that mark on your hand.”

“I…” Ronan can’t think.

“Enough!” Cassandra says loudly. “This talk wastes time. It matters not right now if you are guilty or innocent.” She gives a signal and Ronan watches warily as the guards by the door approach and unlock the cuffs about his wrists. They drop heavily to the floor and Ronan rubs at the raw marks they leave behind. “All that matters,” Cassandra continues, “is that you might be the only person able to stop this.”

There are so many dead and Ronan’s memories are a mess and there’s a sickening feeling up in his head that is trickling like ice water down his spine, but Ronan cannot help the wave of misery and resentment that rolls through him at her words.

He’d come here, to the land of the humans, to escape this, and yet it followed him even here. He has no clue what he has to offer them besides the strange mark weighing down his palm and the dirty ash that he’s starting to think might have once been people sticking at his face, but Cassandra is staring at him with something that looks like resignation and desperation rolled into one and Leliana is staring at him with such _hope_ –

And Ronan has never much been able to turn his back on anything, no matter how hard he tried.

“Alright,” he says, and he staggers to his feet on legs that want to take him back to the floor. “Alright, tell me what I can do.”

.

The first rift closes easily enough.

Ronan focuses on the grip of his pilfered daggers, tries not to care about the body he’d taken them from, and allows Cassandra to lead him through hordes of demons even as his hand feels like it’s on fire. He’s covered in blood and ash still and he can feel something crusting in his hair that might have once been in someone’s body.

Solas’s grip on his wrist is almost as painful as his cuffs had been earlier, but Ronan allows him to thrust his hand to the sky and watches as the splinters shudder, shake and then implode into nothingness.

“Amazing,” Solas says, fingers still loose in Ronan’s wrist, and he gets the impression that he might be talking to himself. “Truly amazing.”

Cassandra sheaths her sword. Ronan is unsurprised to find she doesn’t look any less dangerous. “We need to keep moving.”

Solas doesn’t say anything but continues to look at Ronan with narrowed, unreadable eyes. Unnerved Ronan jerks his hand free, pulls it close to his chest unconsciously. Solas’s mouth twitches and he glances away and at Cassandra and Ronan feels unbearably relieved once the pressure of his gaze lifts.

By the time they’ve collected a dwarf, saved the lost Inquisition scouts and staggered up a mountain through the billowing Frostback snow Ronan finds that his stomach has turned itself inside out and his head has started pounding out a rhythm that matches his heart.

“We’re about at the conclave now,” Cassandra says grimly, and Ronan looks up from his staggering feet expecting to see walls that stretch to the sky and instead finds nothing. He smells something foul and acidic – _the smell from the campfires the day he left his clan_ – and he realizes that the nothing he’s seeing right now is _everything_.

“This…” His words fumble on his tongue. Two feet from him is a skeleton bent at the knees in prayer, smoke curling lazily in its grubby ribcage. It cannot possibly have an expression when fire has licked all of the flesh and skin from its bones, but Ronan cannot help but feel that it’s screaming at him. “You think _I_ did this?”

Cassandra’s eyes close for a moment. “Maker help us all, I hope not.”

Ronan’s stomach lurches and his vision goes white. He sees something fiery and green and hears a screaming that splits his ears – and he cannot tell whether it’s a memory or prophesy.

“Woah there,” Varric says, voice tinny in Ronan’s rattling ears, and there’s a hand on his back steadying him as his vision swims back in watery whites and greys. “Alright?”

Ronan coughs, presses his good hand to his brow and is alarmed to find it feverish hot. “Dandy.”

“It is… unpleasant,” Solas says softly behind him, and he sounds honestly regretful.

“I’m fine,” Ronan says again, and he shakes Varric’s hand from his shoulder and straightens. “It was just unexpected.” He ignores the sympathetic look Casandra is giving him and pulls his knives from his belt. “Let’s keep going.”

The others glance among themselves but do not protest. Ronan lets them think that the unsteady sway to his steps comes from the horror of seeing the conclave like this and not from the whispering that has taken up permanent residence in his ears. If he focuses, he can catch words that sound like his own.

It was like that, sometimes, warnings coming to him in phrases and comments that sound like they’d been sewn together with his own speech. Other times less so; dreams or shaky images that lurch behind his eyelids, a pull in his gut that might say _yes_ or _no_.

Ronan’s gift is astounding and powerful and without equal in all of Thedas – it is all completely rubbish in its inability to remain coherent. It has the logical patterns of a child and is just as like to tantrum at him when it does not get its way.

(he suspects that he might be heading for the worst yet – he’d never _disobeyed_ it like this before; torn a hole right in the gossamer future it had planned out.)

All around him the broken walls smoke and the air smells like the dead. There are so many bodies too; skeletons that had been caught in such sudden heat that they’d been preserved where they kneel, bones black and empty eyes following him as he walks.

“The first rift,” Solas says under his breath and Ronan raises his head to look at the starting point of this whole mess.

Compared to the tear arcing through the sky it is small, but compared to the breach Ronan had sealed along the mountain pass it is a giant. It’s as beautiful as it is horrifying; whispering green crystals sliding along each other, leaking the Beyond from where they touch, spitting and crying and shouting – and it’s a _thing,_ a doorway, it cannot possibly be _alive_ , but it screams so loudly within Ronan’s head.

He winces, hand to his forehead, barely coherent enough to see Leliana and her men jogging towards them.

 _Kill the elf_ , says the voice in his head that is definitely not his own – and this one feels like memory and prophecy at once.

Somebody touches his elbow and Ronan jumps. He realizes that everybody is looking at him. “I’m – I’m sorry. I did not hear you.”

“Seriously kid,” Varric says, “are you alright? You look a little green about the gills.”

Ronan offers him a wan smile. “Perhaps you are just mistaking my gills for my hand, then.”

“Ah! So this one does have an ounce of humour in him yet!” Varric exclaims, although the hand that he pats Ronan’s arm with is so very gentle. “That’s good. Hold on to that. I have a feeling you’re going to need it.”

“The breach,” Solas says, and there’s nothing in his tone that makes him sound impatient but Ronan feels it anyway. He turns to Ronan. “Can you close it?”

Ronan darts a look around; at all the tense, hopeful faces staring at him like he is their only salvation. He straightens his back and smooths his face and tries his uttermost not to be sick where he stands. “I can try.”

“That is all we can ask,” Leliana says, notching an arrow into her bow. “Get to the rift. We will cover you.”

“Be careful,” Ronan says, because he has seen enough bloodshed for today and if he can help it he will not have any more. “If I can’t do this – if it doesn’t work – go.”

Cassandra raises a brow at him. “You are suggesting we leave you behind?”

Ronan gives her a tired smile. “Seeker, I am suggesting that if I cannot close this rift, it will not matter.”

“A fine attitude to have,” Varric agrees and then, because there’s nothing left to say, they turn and head for the rift.

Ronan eyes the path leading off and around, the safest route down, but he can hear the steady crackling in the sky and see the way that for every second they linger another demon breaks from the Beyond. There’s a drop right up ahead, more sizable than is advisable, but Ronan is an elf and a hunter and he bounds towards it even as he hears his companions curse and hurry to follow him. He skids on his heels, drops off the side and uses a steady grip at the broken wall that borders it to haul himself down without breaking stride.

He lands on his feet and almost immediately both the rift and his head explode.

“That’s the Divine,” Cassandra gasps behind him as billowy figures of green smoke form. “At the Conclave! So she is alive!”

“No,” Solas says. “Watch, look. That is not life. That is a…” he hesitates.

“It’s a memory,” Ronan says, and then, as the truth hits him, “ _my_ memory.”

The green shadows shiver like they’ve heard the words and the scene forms in earnest – the Divine strung between men and magic and a figure looming before her, something that Ronan cannot see held aloft in his hand.

 _“Someone help me!_ ” Calls the Divine and the words ricochet about Ronan’s head like stray arrows.

It is strange, he finds, to be remembering a memory as opposed to remembering a future.

He watches as another him bursts into the smoky scene, and it is a relief to see himself without the green light on his palm. This Ronan looks confused but so very brave. It’s a lie, of course, Ronan cannot remember this, but just watching it replay now he is terrified.

“ _Kill the elf,”_ booms the voice from Ronan’s head and he shivers as the words drip down his spine, twisting and turning to settle unpleasantly hot in his stomach.

Thrice over, he has heard those words now. He is beginning to think they might follow him into his dreams.

His head splinters in agony and Ronan cries out, sinks to his knees as they give way. This time it’s Solas that settles a hand on his back and Ronan grits his teeth as green flows behind his eyelids. He sees himself and the Divine but the creature who had started this is still a faint outline.

“So you didn’t hurt the Divine,” Cassandra breathes, “you didn’t do this.”

 _I didn’t do this_ , Ronan thinks hazily, and the relief that crushes him is overwhelming. He is not responsible for the skeletons that still smolder around them, he is not the reason the universe is ripping itself asunder. He did not do this, it’s not his fault –

 _But it might be_ , whispers something at the back of his head, _this future was never meant to be, who knows what you changed here?_

Solas’s hand on his shoulder tightens. “If you open the breach you should be able to reseal it properly,” he says urgently. “I know you must be in pain right now, but this needs to be done.”

“That means demons,” Cassandra hisses and her sword rasps as she draws it free. “Stand ready.”

Ronan plants a hand on the ground and hauls himself back to his feet, shaking Solas’s hand from his back as he does. Something about Solas makes him uneasy in a way he cannot explain. It could be that he’s a city elf who has made no secret of his disdain for the Dalish, but Ronan thinks it might be more than that. His gut feeling is not to trust him and his gut feelings usually turn out to be right.

“You got this, kid?” Varric asks, and Ronan takes a deep breath, gives a tight nod and thrusts his hand to the sky.

The rift trembles from where they connect and Ronan can feel it right down inside himself. And then it explodes and something hideous and huge tumbles out.

“Pride demon!” Cassandra shouts and the air is full of the creaking of bows being drawn and the whistle or arrows. Ronan just manages to roll away as it takes a swing, smashing the ground where he’d been a second before.

The fight is brutal. Ronan lurks at the edges, pulling at the rift with his mark whenever he can. Around him soldiers and scouts fall in bloody messes. By the time the demon is to its knees and the rift weakened the ground is covered with the fallen.

“Now!” Solas shouts, and although he barely seems to raise his voice it carries across the length of the field, even over the fighting.

Ronan slashes once more at the demon and then turns and sprints away, stumbling a little on bodies and rubble, and reaches for the sky.

His whole body crackles as he and the rift connect. _Close_ , he thinks feverishly, _please close. Enough of this. Enough_. He feels the tension from the mark on his hand all the way to his gut and then up and to the sky like a rebounding rubber band.

 _Close, close, close_.

The rift groans and the splinters shudder against one another – and then it implodes.

_A man gaunt in the face and red in the skin – body stretched and stretched until he towers over them all. The grip on Ronan’s wrist is thin fingered, and he can feel the press of it right down into his very bones._

_He rumbles, “You’ve spoiled it with your stumbling.”_

_The red man throws him then, and –_

Ronan comes to on the ground, face buried in dirt and blood and muck. He can feel people grasping on his shoulders turning him over. His hand hurts. His _head_ hurts.

“Lavellan,” somebody calls and Ronan frowns towards the broken sky, because that is his people but not his name. “You’ve done it. The rift is sealed. _Lavellan_.”

And Ronan groans once and passes out.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Ronan awakens a Herald to a god in which he does not believe.  

The irony is thick enough that he can almost taste it on his tongue. Sick of being hailed the prophet of his people he leaves – only to be promoted to Herald, messenger of the Gods, instead. He does not know what this says about his life other than freedom is not meant to be.  

He appreciates that Cassandra had not had him executed while he slept, but he can’t muster up more than vague half replies for her earnest belief in him. It’s not that he doesn’t try to protest the title, it’s just that all the conversations seem to go like this:  

“I’m an Elf. A _Dalish Elf_.”  

“I had noticed, yes.”  

“I cannot possibly be the Herald of your Gods.”  

“Perhaps, perhaps not.”  

And then Cassandra or Cullen or Leliana would beat a quick retreat and Ronan would be left with mounting frustration and nowhere to place it all.  

To top it off the human politics are… _intense_. Everything is Templars this, mages that, and Ronan knows, of course, how magic is seen in the world of the Shems, but experiencing it first hand is something else entirely. He understands the necessity of keeping a handle on magic – anybody would – but he finds Templars and Circles distasteful.  

It doesn’t help, he supposes, that there is perhaps an extra reason for him to throw his lot to the mages instead of those who would imprison them. He’s honest enough to recognize the bias in himself. Not just because his brain has come threaded with its own mystical tic, but because –  

No. That’s another thought train that Ronan is too scared to take these days. There are too many uncertainties in his life, he can no longer trust in the visions that have guided him, unsure which ones he has lost and which ones accounted for his flight from the clan.  

It aches. It aches more than the scar in his palm ever can. Because there were visions, a future, that Ronan has been waiting for all his life. There’s – there’s a person that Ronan has been waiting to meet for a long, long time.  

And he can’t help but wonder if this is the trade off – if he gets his person or his freedom but not both, never both.  

Of course, he doesn’t feel particularly free at the moment.  

He’s bent at the waist washing his hair as best he can with a bucket of chilly water when somebody knocks on the door to his hut in Haven. At this point he’s too used to such knocks to even be bothered by the fact he’s shirtless and sopping wet about the head. 

“Yes?” He calls and the door rattles open.  

“Herald, we – oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t realize you were – that is to say –.”  

Ronan smiles a little and turns to look over his shoulder while he combs his hair dry with a towel. “It’s fine, Josephine. I’m just washing the mud off. It turns out the Fallow Mire isn’t the most hospitable place for anybody who wears their hair to their shoulders.”  

Josephine still refuses to make eye contact, staring determinedly up at the ceiling with bright red cheeks. The candle on her clipboard is wavering dangerously close to the frills on her sleeve. “All the same, Herald, I wish you’d warned me.”  

_That’s not my name_ , Ronan thinks but does not say because out of all the people here Josephine so far has done the most to make him feel at home. He appreciates that immensely, more than he has the words to say. Although it’d been his choice to leave his clan, he’d never imagined it would end up like _this_.  

“My apologies, Josephine,” he says as he reaches for a shirt. “I think we both should be grateful that I’m wearing pants this time, no?”  

Her cheeks immediately flare like he’d set them on fire. “I – I’m still so truly sorry about that.”  

Ronan laughs a little as he buttons up. “No harm done, really.” He pauses fondly. “But I assume there was something more than watching me dress to this visit?”  

“Yes,” she says, clearly relieved to be back on topic. “We were wondering if you’d perhaps join us in the war room? I believe Cassandra and Cullen wish to discuss Fiona’s offer to meet in Redcliffe.”  

“What is there to discuss? I believe I already made it clear that I stand with the mages in this argument. Compared to the Templars, they’re a much surer bet for closing the breach.” Ronan straightens, already shivering at the tickle of his damp hair at the back of his neck.  

“Be that as it may, I believe the others would like to consider a – a plan of attack, if you will.” Josephine offers him a smile. “We’ll be waiting for you, Herald.”  

Ronan watches her tiredly as she leaves the hut, wincing at the close of the door even though it hadn’t been particularly loud.  

His head hasn’t felt right since he’d left the Fade. Noises sometimes seemed too loud and his dreams had been confusing, frightening things. He couldn’t make heads or tails of them, and they felt so – so _urgent_. It was almost like there was too much that the world wanted to tell him and it was trying to get it out all at once, speaking over itself louder and louder and louder each time.  

Sighing, he absently starts fixing his usual braid behind his ear as he nudges the door open with his foot (it never seemed to close right, which is how Josephine had learnt to be careful with her knocking) and strides out into the freezing evening air.  

Around him Haven bustles, and exhausted and on edge as he is Ronan has to appreciate that. Solas raises a hand as he passes and Ronan returns it even though he hasn’t yet made his mind up on him. The Chantry looms giant and monolithic above the training grounds and Ronan patiently pretends he does not hear the whispers behind him as he pushes open its heavy doors.  

The truth was although plenty call him the Herald of Andraste, there were just as many who call him Knife-Ear or Halla Rider or other… less pleasant variations. He is sure that part of it is an intimidation tactic, and although Ronan doesn’t wish to stir up any more trouble than his presence already causes, he can’t help but smile at the creativity sometimes.  

Ronan had spent his childhood estranged from the others in his Clan for a gift that was not yet understood, and then a few long, tedious years in Tevinter where he was worth less than the dirt he cleaned.  

If they want to frighten him they’d have to do better than that.  

Mother Giselle nods at him as he passes and Ronan nods back before opening the doors to the war room as quietly as he can because it was difficult to enter the room without seemingly making a grand spectacle and Ronan is trying to subtly discourage that sort of association with himself.  

Cassandra is the first to spot him, obvious in the way her brow immediately creases. “Herald, thank you for joining us.”  

“I’m sorry if I’m late. I was washing Fallow Mire out of my hair.” He pauses. “I was also not entirely sure what you wished to discuss, I’m afraid.”  

Cullen immediately leaps in. “I was hoping we might discuss this inane idea you have to support the mage rebellion.”  

Ronan offers his most passive smile. “Well, I was just suggesting we ask the mages for help with the breach, but if you think supporting their rebellion would be the best way to do that, then by all means.”  

Immediately Cullen’s face goes blotchy red under his stubble and Ronan can see that he was working himself up into a bluster. Cassandra cut in smoothly. “What I think Commander Cullen meant, Herald, was that the Templars would be just as suitable to the task.”  

Ronan does his best to maintain his fraying patience. This was a conversation they’d had too many times already as far as he was concerned. “With no disrespect intended to the Templar Order,” he says even as he means all the disrespect he can, “my first impression at Val Royeaux was not in their favour.”  

“And the mages have done any better?” Cullen scoffs. “This war –.”  

“This war,” Ronan interrupts, “involves the Templars too. I do not claim that the mages are without fault – indeed, they’re all but numerous at the moment – but given my limited options I find the mages to be the safest choice for many reasons.”  

“I agree with the Herald,” Leliana says, finally speaking up since Ronan had entered the room. “At the very least I think we should see what the Grand Enchanter wants, given her invitations the other day.”  

“It’s not a bad idea,” Josephine agrees.  

Cullen and Cassandra exchange glances and Cullen sighs, scuffing a hand through his hair irritably. “Very well. I won’t fight you further on this for now. I know when I’ve lost a battle.” 

“Thank you,” Ronan says, and even he’s surprised to find he means it. He and Cullen have not seen eye to eye on many issues so far, but he appreciates how difficult it might be to go from being a Templar to siding against them.  

Ronan knows if he were asked he’d never be able to turn on his clan.  

“Tomorrow, then,” Cassandra says heavily. “We’ll set off for Redcliffe at first light.”  

“The sooner the better,” Ronan agrees.  

Josephine sighs and offers him a smile. “In the meantime Herald, sleep well.”  

Ronan’s stomach lurches and he tries not to look too exhausted. “I doubt that, Ambassador. I doubt that very much.”  

. 

That night Ronan spends longer than he needs to poring over reports that aren’t his to examine, scribbling notes in the margins and trying desperately to ignore the bed behind him. 

It was harder than he’d expected. It’d taken him a while to adjust to the novelty of having a bed – he was much more used to sleeping closer to the ground with a good haul of furs – but once he had… Mythal help him, it was delicious.  

He guiltily thinks it’ll be a shame when he has to return to the Dalish way of things. He will so miss the idea of a mattress.  

As the night wears on it becomes harder and harder to stay upright. His head sinks close to the desk and once or twice he blinks to find the candle shortened alarmingly. Frankly, he’s running on too little energy as it is, and when he _does_ manage to talk himself into sleep it’s hardly restful.  

His dreams are just too loud. He wakes up sore and cranky and confused.  

But he’s not stupid and he knows he can’t keep this up for much longer.  

Sighing, Ronan sets aside his quill and glances out the window where the moon is sitting low. There’s probably three hours, tops, before dawn breaks and somebody else comes knocking at his door to rouse him for the journey to the Hinterlands.  

That’s not too bad. A few hours of rest will be enough to keep him up right in his saddle, keep him from dozing off and waking violently when his dreams scare him from his sleep which would be that much harder to explain in company.  

At this point Ronan isn’t even scared of the things he sees in his dreams, so much as he’s scared of what’s absent in them. 

Before he’d left his clan, before the Conclave, before the Fade, before _shattering the future_ there had been staples to his prophesies, certain dreams he’d come to expect, that had followed him for as long as he could remember.  

And they’d been frighteningly _gone_ lately.  

Ronan curses and rubs at his grainy eyes, leaning back in his seat with a loud creak.  

Creators help him, he was fucking _exhausted_. There was too much, too little, and he wasn’t meant for this. He was meant for watching over his clan, for making sure they didn’t lose children to cold snaps and rushing rivers. He’d been so lonely and suffocated and terrified of the growing responsibility, sure, but it was a fear he was used to.  

And Ronan doubts he’ll ever get used to… _this_.  

_Just a little nap_ , the thinks blearily, _just enough to keep me from collapsing mid negotiations tomorrow._  

The chair rattles loudly as he pushes it away from the desk and Ronan nearly stumbles twice on the short trip to the bed. He hits it like a stack of bricks and is out like a light before his head even touches the pillow. 

. 

Ronan knows he’s dreaming the moment he opens his eyes. After a lifetime of predictions he could tell reality and dreams and prophecy apart with only a single functioning brain cell.  

It is, however, different than usual.  

This time it feels… it feels like normal. His brain is full of whispering hisses and everything is too bright, but it’s coherent, more _before_ than it has been for weeks now. 

He’s looking at a room, unfamiliar but clearly Ferelden. It’s night here, too, and candlelight casts long shadows on the gnarled wood walls. There’s a bed and a table and a rug on the floor, but other than that it’s empty, not so much unlived in as transitory. 

Something sighs gentle in his head and a moment later the sound comes from around him and Ronan sees somebody sitting hunched at the desk. Broad shoulders, naked back, dark skin, darker hair –  

When dreaming Ronan is far from coherent, a presence more than a person, but realization hits him like lightning and whatever of him exists in this space between sleep and reality shivers all the way through.  

At the foot of the bed is a robe, beautiful and expensive for all that it’s carelessly thrown, in the corner a staff, well-loved and something Ronan could recognize with his fingertips alone even though he’s never touched it.  

At the desk the man huffs and leans back in his chair, stretching his arms high above his head to ease the kinks from his back, and Ronan watches, hungry and desperate and as close to tears as he can be with what little of him there is here.  

_Dorian_ , Ronan thinks, a little deliriously. _Dorian, Creators, you’re still here, you’re still to be, I can still have you, you’re not gone, you’re not gone, you’re not gone –_  

Dorian straightens suddenly and turns, seemingly looking right at him. Ronan gets one delicious moment of bright hazel and a brief glance of the mole under his left eye. 

And then he gasps awake, Dorian’s name as heavy and precious as gold on his tongue.  

 


End file.
